Known for the innovative design of its products that are specs-heavy, the Taiwanese company emphasizes that its products are priced rightly to meet the budget of its consumers.

It has its vision clear - to give the best of the technology to its consumers, at realistic prices, without compromising on quality - and wants to continue to work towards it.

A day ahead of Computex 2016, Asus hosted a major event in its home country, Taipei, Taiwan, where it showcased a range of the Zenfone 3 smartphones, besides its new notebook, Transformer hybrid, and more products.

Asus Zenfone 3, Deluxe and Ultra Smartphones In Pictures

While all these products have their own set of features and specs, they have one thing in common - a metal body design. Moreover, all of them bring impressive specifications on table.

Speaking of the new Zenfone series smartphones, the company has introduced three variants of the Zenfone 3, including the Zenfone 3 Deluxe, the Zenfone 3 Ultra, and the Zenfone 3 priced for USD 499, USD 479, and USD 249 respectively.

All these smartphones under the Zenfone lineup are rich in specs, run Android Marshmallow topped with Zen UI 3.0v. They have their own USP, and but share some common key specs such as USB Type C port, fingerprint scanner and more.

We went hands on with them at the Asus Zenvolution event in Taipei, and found 3 areas where these smartphone have nailed it, and figured out three of their weak points. Here we give you more details, in the form of our first impressions of these products.

PROS

Good design and display:

All of the Zenfone 3 variants don metal body design and look good for their respective price segments. We like the aluminum metal design with curved edges of the Zenfone Deluxe.

The company says that this is the first smartphone with invisible antenna design, as the company has placed the antenna around the sides of the phone, to keep its rear clean and smooth. Its 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display with Full HD (1080p) resolution looks vibrant and offer good viewing angles.

The Zenfone 3 Ultra, on the other hand, dons a matte-finished rear design, which looks and feels premium.

Given its display size, it does feel pretty big to be used single-handedly, but it is not heavy. The phone is pretty sleek, and weighs light. The major difference it has, in terms of design, than its siblings is the placement of fingerprint scanner.

Asus Zenfone 3 Ultra In Pictures

Unlike the other two variants that have fingerprint pad placed below the rear camera, this one gets a fingerprint scanner integrated on the home key.

As far as the display is concerned, it flaunts a massive 6.8-inch display with FHD 1080p resolution, which offers vivid images and good viewing angles.

In this department, we found the Zenfone 3 to be the best looking out of all three variants, especially considering that it is priced half of the cost of the Deluxe.

It flaunts the spun-metal finish with Corning Gorilla Glass topping, with metallic rim running around the sides. Thanks to its 5.5-inch FHD Super IPS+ display, which is a visual treat, the phone sits pretty comfortably on hand, and is smooth to use.

The keys on sides are rightly placed and are easy to access.

Promising hardware:

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe is a monster that is powered by top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, which is paired with a massive 6GB of RAM. This is the chipset that also powers premium phones like Samsung Galaxy S7 series and LG G5, and Asus' Chinese rival Xiaomi's Mi5 smartphone.

If this is not enough, you get different versions of the phone with storage capacities ranging from 64GB, going up to 256GB. And to ensure that the chipset gets a good battery back-up, it has a 3000mAh battery with quick charge 3.0v.

The Zenfone 3 Ultra is also a powerhouse that runs an octa-core Snapdragon 652 processor, which is paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage capacity. The phone packs in a 4600mAh battery with support for quick charge.

With the battery of such capacity, it should last for a day on one time full charge.

The Zenfone 3 is also powered by octa-core Snapdragon 625 processor with 14nm architecture. It has eight Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2 GHz, and is paired with 3GB RAM/32GB internal storage or 4GB RAM/64GB storage capacity. The 3000mAh battery on this phone seems good enough to last for a day of mixed used.

Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe In Pictures

Good Camera Specs:

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe features a 23MP rear facing camera with Sony IMX318 sensor. It has 0.03s autofocus, 4-axis OIS, f/2.0, 4K video recording capability, and three-axis electronic image stabilization for video. The camera is accompanied with dual tone flash light. Up front, you get an 8MP snapper.

The Zenfone 3 Ultra adorns a 23MP rear facing camera with dual flash, PDAF, OIS, F/2.0, and FHD video recording. Up front there is an 8MP camera to take care of selfies.

And Zenfone 3, on the other hand, gets a 16MP primary snapper with 8MP front-facing camera for selfie enthusiasts.

During the brief hands on session, we found that the rear camera on all three variants worked good to their standards and capacity. Basically, we found the camera good and look forward to test it for more details. We reserve our final take on its performance for the detailed review.

CONS

Non-removable battery:

While the premium metal unibody chassis with invisible antenna design looks nice, what it takes away is the removable battery module. None of the Zenfone's rear panel is removable, which means that you cannot remove the battery of these smartphones.

No flash light with front-facing camera:

The rear facing cameras on all three smartphones do seem impressive due to their higher MP sensor and additional camera features. However, what we find as one of the weak points of the phones is the front-facing camera. Sadly, none of these phones have flash light with their front facing camera, which is a disadvantage considering that the presence of flash is good for taking pictures in dim light conditions.

Asus Zenfone 3 In Pictures

Lacks water resistance:

The Zenfone 3 lineup of smartphones has been touted as the company's best Zenfones till date. In fact, with the Zenfone 3 Deluxe, the company tries to come out of its comfort zone of its low and mid-range Zenfone smartphones, to be a part of the competition in the higher range segment.

Despite all this, Asus chose to ignore water and dust resistant capabilities on its new Zenfones! The one point that we really think could have given Zenfone extra points over its competitors is the water and dust resistance.

This is one important feature that most of the companies ignore. We were hoping for the Zenfone 3 smartphones to be water friendly, but the company threw water on it instead by not adding the IPx certifications on its new smartphones.